Take a Sad Song
by EllieMurasaki
Summary: Sam's detoxing and Dean's making tomato rice soup. Coda to 5x14, spoilers for 5x13.


"Please," Dean says to a god that evidence suggests isn't there, but he's running out of options. "I can't..." Can't say yes. Can't go on saying no. Can't watch Sam tear himself apart. Can't save the people in that town, or Mom or Dad, or that idiot kid's even stupider friend. Can't get Bobby out of that wheelchair. Can't keep Cas from flitting off and getting himself killed. Can't save everyone. Can't save anyone. Can't not try.

Can't do this alone.

"I need some help," he whispers. "Please?"

Dean stays in the car graveyard, standing in the cold February air, until it occurs to him that the silence is an echo of the answer the last time he said he couldn't do this alone: yes, you can.

"Yeah, well, I don't want to," Dean tells the air.

_And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain, don't carry the world upon your shoulders... _yeah, that's helpful, Mom's memory, thanks.

But now that Dean's thinking of Mom, he can't stop: a fistful of salt in every pot of spaghetti (and was that something else her parents taught her? Dean at eight had thought himself so clever for making spaghetti that would ghostproof the Winchesters as well as tasting right), a hand guiding his on a crayon so he could write the day's stories just like she did (was her journal like Dad's and like the Google doc Sam updates after every hunt?), the nightly reassurance that angels are watching over him (ha ha fucking _ha_, Michael, what the fuck did you do to her?), a knife dismembering vegetables with efficient grace.

Sam hasn't eaten since sometime in the middle of the mess with Famine. Dean should probably eat too.

Dean pokes through Bobby's fridge and cabinets, comes up empty, drives in the direction of the nearest grocery store, drives around till it opens, drives back. Two cans of vegetable broth go in a pot, the lid goes on, and the burner ignites with a click-click-hiss. He rinses off two stalks of celery, murmuring the incantation to bless holy water even though he doesn't have a rosary nearby (and he's fairly certain Bobby's already blessed the water system), and chops it small as grains of rice. The repetitive motion is soothing, like cleaning a gun. The broth boils and he turns the heat down, adds the celery and a cup of rice and a couple teaspoons salt, replaces the lid and settles in to wait twenty minutes.

Sam's shouting at Anna, or maybe Cas or himself, loudly enough to be clear even through several layers of iron and wood: "You could have gone after Azazel! Killed him before he poisoned me and Jake and Ava and all of us! Before he made Jake open the Devil's Gate and let out Lilith and Ruby! Before everything! Dean for the first seal, Lilith for the last, and me and my demon blood to unlock them both, and Azazel did that, all of it, and you could have _stopped him_! All his special kids, everyone we killed, Lily's girlfriend and Ava's fiancé and Jake's whole squad, everyone who died because the Devil's Gate opened, the whole damn _world_, you could have saved them all!"

It's gonna be a long twenty minutes.

Dean amuses himself for a while considering scenarios for a Winchester Brothers invasion of 1973, finally settling on the most plausible being Sam busting into Liddy's house on his own and distracting Azazel by being demonspawn—Dean tries very hard not to think 'demonspawn'—and running a con on him, _offer me money, power, everything I ask for_, and Dean firing the Colt and Sam saying to Azazel's corpse "I want my parents back, you son of a bitch." But it comes back to the fact that Dean hesitated too long, should have fired when he had the chance...

Dean tastes the rice and it's soft enough. He adds two cans of tomato soup to the pot, stirs, lets it heat a little longer, digs out a bowl and spoon and goes to find one of the gallon jugs of holy water.

Sam's staring at the ceiling when Dean peeks in, no longer talking to the air but not looking real lucid either. Dean maneuvers the door open and himself and the tray in, and Sam doesn't look over, not till Dean has locked the door and set down the tray and splashed holy water on Sam's face. "Let me _out _you son of—" Sam snarls, rattling the cuffs, and Dean takes advantage of the opportunity to pour a spoonful of soup into Sam's mouth. Sam spits it back, "that's not, I need, I need," of course he wants blood, fucking fuck.

"You need food, man," Dean says. He tries another spoonful and this time clamps Sam's mouth closed so he has no choice but to swallow. He hasn't needed that trick since Sam was two.

The bowl's half empty when Sam's eyes clear. "Tomato rice soup?" he asks. "I'm not _six_, dude. Or sick."

"Bullshit," Dean answers, and carries on. When the bowl's empty he switches to water, pulls off his outer shirt and soaks the sleeve and mops the sweat off Sam's face, any excuse to stay here and be useful and not get lost in his head.

Sam growls and jerks his arm against the cuff and Dean is knocked across the room. He lunges for the bowl and spoon and shirt, almost leaves the holy water, and unbolts the door from one side and rebolts it from the other: the bowl can smash, the spoon can stab, the shirt can strangle, the water can drown. He goes back upstairs, warms the soup, serves himself a bowl. It doesn't taste right. He hasn't had tomato rice soup that tastes right since he was four.

(When alone, Sam is explosive; when alone, Dean is poisonous. Together they fight demons and ghostproof the goddamn soup.)

xXxXx

(note: brilliantly remixed by a currently-anonymous individual at archiveofourown dot org slash works slash 86843 and you should go read that now)


End file.
